From: Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@...>
Date: 2005-03-15T08:22:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Codefest Grant - RubyGems cleanup and enhancement

Jim Weirich wrote:
> Part of this can be resolved by the ability to list different Gem sources.
>  This source (identified by URL) contains stable packages and that source
> (a different URL) containts unstable packages.  Gems can manage different
> sources today, although the interface is primitive.  The gems team is
> thinking about how to make this more flexible (e.g. get gems from this
> source, unless its not available, then get them from that source). This is
> certainly something that the Seattle team could work on if they decided
> to.

Right, but I think you also need some "slots" on the user side.  If they 
want to keep up to date with the most current stable and unstable gem, 
at the same time there should be a way to update them.  It seems to me 
that if you just have URLs once you've downloaded the gem from the 
stable server, your system won't have any memory that that foolib-0.39 
is the stable version of foolib.

> Beyond that, you need a team of people who are willing to test gems,
> catogorized them, and then migrate them from unstable to stable.

Right.  I don't think that's too difficult though.  If we don't have 
people who can do this full-time, we could probably also come up with 
some kind of a rating system where people can rate the libraries they 
use.  Libraries passing a certain threshold can be considered 'stable'.

>>(as an aside, what is the current RubyGems method of removing a gem?)
> 
> gem uninstall GEMNAME

Ok, I see that option when I say 'gem help commands'.  I guess I 
expected to see it with 'gem help' or 'gem -h'.  My bad.

Ben